 There is no doubt that a person’s confidence level plays a crucial role in their success, and that includes their success on the job.
We’re not talking about cockiness, which crosses the line and can become detrimental to a person’s success, but confidence, which sows the seeds for progress and achievement. Confidence is especially important when you first get a new job and you want to do well immediately, both in your eyes and also in the eyes of your co-workers. So—how can you do that? To help us answer this question, we’re referencing a recent article by Stephanie Laing titled, “10 Ways You Can Be More Confident at Work,” which appeared on both Refinery29.com and Time.com. However, we’re going to put our own unique twist on this list and rank these ways from least important to most important. (This is a purely subjective ranking, of course, but it’s also a little more fun.) Below is our “Top 10” list for creating confidence when you start a new job: #10—Be thankful for the job. #9—Be heard, but remember to listen. #8—Be polite. #7—Be a student. #6—Be humorous. #5—Be bold. #4—Be supportive of your co-workers. #3—Be straightforward. #2—Be engaging. #1—Be optimistic. Does Laing know what she’s talking about? Well, she’s a Hollywood producer, which means that she’s a woman working in a male-dominated field, where confidence is not just necessary to get ahead, but it can be necessary for professional survival. That’s what makes the lessons she’s learned during her career applicable to just about anybody, regardless of their gender or the industry in which they choose to work. So you’ve just had your face-to-face interview, and it went really well. You feel good about it, and you want to do the right thing by expressing your thanks and appreciation.
However . . . what’s the correct way to do so? We’re going to answer that question with some help from a USAToday.com article titled “Digital Life: How to Say Thanks After the Job Interview” by columnist Steven Petrow. In the article, Petrow offers a number of tips for job seekers and candidates who want to properly express their thanks following their face-to-face interview. Below are five of those tips. #1—Write an email thank-you, not a hand-written one. First and foremost, hand-written notes take too long to arrive at their destination. By the time they do arrive, a hiring decision may already have been made. You don’t have that kind of time. Besides, this is 2015. Hiring managers expect email and not snail mail, and in most cases, they prefer it. #2—Send your thank-you email in a timely fashion. That being said, make sure that you send your email relatively quickly, or you run the same risk as if you had sent a hand-written note. According to Petrow, by the end of the following business day is the latest you should send it. You want the hiring manager to know that you’re excited about the possibility of working at their company. #3—Individualize the email if you’re sending it to multiple people. Do not send the same email to every person, and definitely do not simply send a mass email to everybody. That denotes a lack of decorum at best and laziness at worst, and you don’t want to be known for either. Instead, send a different email to every person, referencing something specific from your conversation with them. #4—Proofread the email carefully . . . and then proofread it again. Basically, the note has to be perfect. You don’t want to get the attention of company officials, only to point out the fact that you can’t spell and have little attention to detail. If necessary, have other people read it, as well. Do whatever it takes to present a highly polished final product. #5—Know what you want the note to accomplish. According to Petrow, your thank-you note should do three important things:
Trying to learn new tasks on the job—especially if it’s a new job—can be a stressful experience. You want to impress those around you and prove your worth, and you want do all of this in the shortest amount of time possible.
So the question is . . . how can you accomplish this? We have the answer, with some help from the Time.com article “The Best Way to Learn a New Skill on the Job” by Kelsey Manning. Below are five steps for quickly learning new tasks (and skills) on the job: #1—Learn as much as you can before you even start. If it’s a new job, find out exactly what you’ll need to know and what things you’ll be learning and conduct research about them beforehand. The Internet is a wonderful tool for doing this, as are co-workers, friends, and anybody else who could prove helpful. #2—Ask as many questions as you need to ask. Observation is your friend. You should observe and notice everything you can, and your learning curve will definitely involve some trial-and-error. After all, you don’t want to ask questions about every little thing. However, there comes a time when not asking questions becomes counter-productive and it would be best to “bite the bullet” and ask for assistance in solving a problem or pushing past an obstacle. #3—Write everything down. This is crucial. It would be nice if your brain retained all of this new information solely through observation, but that’s simply not going to be the case. Writing down as much as possible will allow you to refer to the information later (when you find that your brain didn’t retain all of it), accelerating your learning curve with a minimum amount of inconvenience for co-workers. #4—Try to never ask the same question twice. This both shortens the amount of time it will take to learn your new tasks and/or skills and also impresses your boss and co-workers. Astute observation (step #2) and diligence in writing everything down (step #3) will greatly aid in your effort to achieve this. #5—Stay calm and learn on. There will be times when you feel helpless, perhaps even silly, but don’t lose your focus. The last thing you want to do is panic. (When you think about it, panicking never really helped anybody.) Instead, take a deep breath, regain your concentration, and take a course of action appropriate for the situation. |
